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Thumb placement


Guest Lee Van Cleef
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Guest Lee Van Cleef

Okay, so after a long lay off I'm starting out with my bass all over again. I'm using the free trial on the Fender Play app at the moment to start from scratch and try to learn good posture but there's something I don't understand about thumb placement. I've noticed that when the tutors are moving their thumb from string to string they get to the G string but leave their thumb on the A string, instead of moving down to the D. Is there a reason people do this? I find it hard to strike the G clean this way, but wondered if it's worth persevering? 

Edited by Lee Van Cleef
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There’s no reason why you can’t move down to the D, it’s just what you feel comfortable with,       I like to mute the lower string to what I’m playing with my thumb, and I play close to the neck,     so I lightly anchor on E A and D strings , the same as is shown in this video at 7.21 . Quite a few friends of mine just anchor on the pickup 🙂

 

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Guest Lee Van Cleef
11 minutes ago, Reggaebass said:

There’s no reason why you can’t move down to the D, it’s just what you feel comfortable with,       I like to mute the lower string to what I’m playing with my thumb, and I play close to the neck,     so I lightly anchor on E A and D strings , the same as is shown in this video at 7.21 . Quite a few friends of mine just anchor on the pickup 🙂

 

That's cool then. I've been watching various bassists playing and I can imagine that if you're playing very fast stuff (think Alex Webster) then it's probably more efficient to anchor on the pick up all the time, but then I guess you'd have to mute with your fretting hand? For some reason I can't get comfortable in my striking if I'm not on the string above. Like you say, it's comfortable for me. Initially moving from string to string was quite cumbersome, but I've noticed the improvement after a few days. 

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